“Why didn’t you put my name.”
“Because you were gone.”
He asked to meet the boys. She refused at first. She needed proof that he would stay. That he would not vanish the moment life became complicated.
But Mason made a terrible mistake. Fear gnawed at him, so he collected a DNA sample from one boy without telling her. She found out and confronted him, furious. Yet the results confirmed what he already saw with his own eyes. After that, he stopped hiding anything and begged her for a real chance.
Little by little, she allowed him into their world. He took the boys to parks and movies. He answered their endless questions and listened to their stories about school and superheroes. Slowly, Kara softened too. She no longer watched him from a distance. She joined their walks, their games, their dinners.
One afternoon, Jake, the oldest, looked up at Mason and asked, “Are you our dad.”
Mason nodded. The boy grinned as if he had solved a puzzle, then ran off to tell his brothers.
But peace did not last. Riley, Mason’s fiancée, noticed the change in him. She searched his phone, discovered Kara, and discovered the boys. She confronted him with fury and calculation.